International Conference on Gender and Education: Critical Issues, Policy and Practice: Re-Gendering Education

International Conference on Gender and Education: Critical Issues, Policy and Practice: Re-Gendering Education

LCSS’s growing gender platform continued its international conference series in Bloomington, IN, United States on International Conference on Gender and Education

LCSS’s gender platform successfully produced the third annual international conference on gender series in partnership with Gediz University, Michigan State University, and Indiana University. The worldwide trusted sexuality research centre, The Kinsey Institute, also contributed to this year’s conference by providing guided tours to the ICGE 2015 attendees.

The conference presentations started after Feray Baskin’s opening remarks and Dr. Tom McKenzie’s welcome speech on behalf of LCSS and other partner organizations. It continued with Prof. Patricia Kubow’s and Peter McLaren’s keynote addresses. While Prof. Kubow discussed the construction of democracy and citizenship identity in South African Township with a particular focus on the female perspectives, Prof. McLaren presented an overview of Latinas’ struggle in labor market drawing on the recent work of feminist scholars such as Lilia Monzo.

At the end of the first day, the attendees continued their discussions on troubling the hegemonic gendered discourses through sharing their lived and professional experiences during the Kinsey Institute Juried Art Show at the Grunwald Gallery.

On the second day of the conference, two keynote addresses on the historical comparison of gender practices and educational reform efforts in the US and Turkey provided an overview of how gender norms and values vary in centralized and decentralized political systems. Prof. Cigdem Balim Harding discussed the influence of neoconservative policies on educational responses and argued the new social re-engineering process in modern Turkey through analyzing the gender construction in the school textbooks. Prof. Margaret Crocco’s keynote address concentrated on contrasting 20th and 21st-century educational reforms from a gendered perspective to explain what educators and policy-makers can learn from the past practices to construct the present educational responses.

Prof. Nadje Al-Ali gave the last keynote speech on female academics’ struggle in the Iraqi higher education system through drawing similarities with the situation of women scholars in the UK. Her theme in the strictest sense explained that institutional gender discrimination is not only the problem of developing countries.

In summary, at this well-attended conference, the presenters had a focus on analyzing gender issues in their disciplines. However, the importance of intersectionality in gender and women studies was highlighted in each session to recognize the influence of gender politics on the social, cultural and educational practices. ICGE 2015 in Bloomington, therefore, achieved a success in terms of bringing together scholars, graduate students, researchers and education specialists from various disciplines and different parts of the world as The theme of the ICGE 2015: Policy, Practice, and Critical Issues aimed so.The ICGE became not only a platform for academic discussions, but also a ground-breaking organization in terms of revitalizing the ideology-free gender dialogues.

Interview by Ozdemir Ahmet - On Thursday 4 April 2013
An interview was conducted with Baroness Molly Meacher at the House of Lords where questions were put out to her with regards to the welfare reforms introduced by the coalition.